Jaou Tunis

Jaou Tunis is a biennial of contemporary art in Tunis, launched by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation in 2013. Lina Lazaar, Vice President of the foundation, founded the biennial and leads it. Jaou sets out to take art beyond dedicated art spaces, staging its exhibitions in sites across the city.

Earlier editions include Nation migrante, held from 12 to 16 May 2017, and an edition from 6 to 20 October 2022. The seventh edition ran from 9 October to 9 November 2024, with Art, Resistance, and the Reconstruction of Futures as its theme. It comprised nine exhibitions, nine performances and nine debates, with more than sixty artists.

The eighth edition, the Archipelago Biennale, runs from 23 October to 22 November 2026 at sites including Quechlet El Attarine, B7L9 Art Centre and the Institut Français. Quechlet El Attarine is a former barracks of about 1,700 square metres in the Medina, with some fifteen rooms around a rectangular courtyard. Completed in 1813 to 1814 under Hammuda Pasha Bey, it housed the National Library of Tunisia until 2005. In 2026 it hosts Becoming the Ocean, the exhibition of the Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement.